Waterstones links with Amazon to sell Kindles in stores

Amazon’s ultra-low prices have long been blamed for the demise of high street booksellers but Waterstones boss James Daunt said he hoped the digital agreement would “complement and strengthen” the traditional attributes of the shops. The 30-year-old chain is undergoing a major refurbishment which includes dedicated digital areas, free wi-fi access and new coffee shops. As well as selling Amazon’s e-reading device, Waterstones will offer other Kindle digital services.

Mr Daunt said: “At Waterstones, we are committed to improving our bookshops quite radically to offer the best possible book-buying experience.

“It is a truly exciting prospect to harness also the respective strengths of Waterstones and Amazon to provide a dramatically better digital reading experience for our customers.”

Waterstones, which has 294 stores in the UK and Ireland, with 15, including university branches, in Yorkshire, was sold last year by HMV to Russian billionaire Alexander Mamut for £53m.

Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos said: “Waterstones is the premier high street bookseller and is passionate about books and readers – a dedication that we share deeply.

“We could never hope for a better partner to bring together digital reading and the physical bookstore.” Waterstones founder Tim Waterstone opened the first store in 1982 at a time when fellow book-lovers were presented with few options on the high street.

Having founded the firm with his £6,000 redundancy package, Mr Waterstone sold the chain to his former employer WH Smith in 1993 for £47m. In 1998, Smiths sold the chain for £300m to HMV Media, now HMV Group.

It is not the first time that Waterstones has worked with Amazon as in 2001 its online operation was franchised to the firm. However Waterstone’s reclaimed its online outlet in 2006 by relaunching its own operation.